The Girl On The Train review: This weekend, I watched the Netflix thriller 'The Girl On The Train'. Directed by Ribhu Dasgupta, the Parineeti Chopra starrer has been inpsired by the best selling Paula Hawkins novel with the same title. But I have not read the book. However, I found Parineeti Chopra's portrayal of the protagonist quite intriguing in terms of her performance. But the film? Well....
Overall, the film is a complete let-down in terms of how it structures the story plotting and rolls out weakly structured characters that are wasted on Parineeti Chopra and Aditi Rao Hydari. Sloppy direction has wrecked the Bollywood version of 'The Girl On The Train'.
The Girl On The Train review: What's disappointing?
Racing across a gamut of turbulent emotions and situations such as infidelity, betrayal, blackmail and a police investigation, The Girl On The Train fails to convince the audience 'what is really going on'.
Putting up an outstanding 'dark' performance, Parineeti Chopra - as Mira Kapoor - portrays the inner turmoil of a successful lawyer who loses everything at one go and finds her life spiralling out of her control. However, the storyline and its stereotyping adds nothing to complement her efforts of bring the film's narrative to life.
Fleeting glimpses of the lovely and luminous Aditi Rao Hydari brings a silver lining of hope to the narrative. However, the disturbed character she tries to portray suffers from lack of depth and the weak narrative lets her down. A weakly structured character cannot rise to the occasion no matter how well she performs in the role.
In the film, characterisation is weak, so are the dialogues and the situations that keep evolving and throwing the whole story off track. Women are shown to be at the mercy of manipulative men who want to cheat them.
'The Girl On The Train' could have offered a brilliant take on several contemporary issues by threading them together as it makes an attempt to show today's young Indians are forced to tackle - alchoholism, mental illness, gas lighting, etc.
How far has it steered itself away from the bestselling English novel - only readers can pass the verdict as I haven't watched it.
But this film gives up totally on itself with several loopholes in its narratives, weak characterisation and screenplay and sloppy direction. That's the tragedy.
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